We have four geldings, all nearly 12 years old. Their names are: Faro, Fyta, Fergus and Fidget. We started keeping Alpacas with these 4 boys in June 2007 and although we had up to eight boys for several years, we have now reverted to keeping our original four. Through this blog we hope to show how much pleasure can be had from owning Alpacas.

OUR SMALL HERD

Our four boys came from Ardo Alpacas in Aberdeenshire. We are not alpaca breeders and have our boys purely as pets. Our experience is that you don't need to be a breeder and that a 'batchelor herd' can give much pleasure to the owner.
We have 5 acres including our big garden and grazing for the boys, 15 miles north of Inverness, Scotland. I spin, knit, felt and crochet with the fleece from the boys.

Clicking!!

Just a reminder that clicking on (most) of the photos will show them greatly enlarged.

Sunday, 19 July 2015

All about Faro - again!

No sign of good summer weather here yet, plenty of rain and gales for a couple of days so not a lot happening - until Friday that was. We noticed during the day that Faro didn't seem to be his usual self, he was lying down more than usual and was only grazing occasionally. This photo of him with his three pals was taken in the early morning and at that stage his tail was still up, a usual sign when humans are around. We penned the boys, gave Faro a mineral drench and sprayed them all because of the amount of flies around.

By early afternoon he had gone down and was not getting up. We thought that his feed might give him the incentive to get up but as the photo shows, he was not interested. A phone call was made to the Vet and Hamish and student arrived shortly afterwards. We expected that with 4 humans around him Faro might try to get up or try to spit - no chance, he just lay there - so this was serious. Hamish took his temperature (lower than normal), checked him over, took a blood sample then gave him a series of injections (B12, antibiotics etc) and Faro hardly flinched or made a sound. We were instructed to get as much water into him as possible and we agreed to wait, keep a close eye on him and wait for the injections to take effect.

In the next few hours he moved position only once and we gave him repeated water drenches, most of which he accepted. Interestingly, for most of the day the other 3 boys stayed near him and when the vet was here it was scary how they came close to watch what was going on. After the above picture was taken they all came around him and laid down a few feet away. We are quite certain that they realised that Faro was unwell, and whilst they did not touch him or go to him directly, they were always in the close vicinity - not something they do all the time. Heavy overnight rain was forecast so we coaxed Faro to his feet and he walked slowly to the nearby shelter and lay down for the night.

The humans were up before 4.00am, peering through the gloom from the house and we could see that Faro was on his feet and walking around! By early morning he was walking short distances then lying down, and often with his pal Fyta close by! Since then he has slowly got back to routine, grazing normally, chewing the cud occasionally, toileting normally and looking generally much better. Phew - this boy is a worry sometimes, so we now await the result of the blood test from the vet.

As well as all this excitement, this was the week for the boys' routine dozes of Verm -X granules in their feed. Not that Fergus here notices anything different in his feed - it all gets 'hoovered' up in double quick time!

Elsewhere around the place, this little fella is enjoying his time in the garden, darting around the plants and doing what rabbits do - dig holes! The grumpy gardener has given his orders to our neighbour's two visiting cats to "Git the bunny critter or your milk ration is halved!" Mmm!

And finally..............we are really pleased with the progress of this Gunnera which we planted in the boggy area 2 years ago.

3 comments:

Glad that Faro has perked up - you must have been relieved to see him up. We are over-run with rabbits, digging ankle traps in the paddocks, but I was pleased to see a neighbours cat leaping the fence out of our property with a rabbit in its jaws yesterday.

Hope Faro continues to get better. Will be interesting to see whether the bloods show anything although sometimes these things arrive and we never quite discover what was wrong before they're better again!